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The future of barley: Growers, breeders pivot as markets shift Published 12:00 pm Friday, August 14, 2026 Bob Brueggeman had big plans for malting barley when he arrived at Washington State University as the new barley breeder in 2019. He brought in the infrastructure and genetics to establish a malt quality lab. Brueggeman got the quality he wanted. But the surprise closure of Great Western Malting’s Vancouver, Wash.-based plant in late 2024 means the company isn’t contracting for dryland malting barley on the Palouse. “That one hit me like a ton of bricks,” Brueggeman said. Another plant, Skagit Valley Brewing in Burlington, Wash., closed in June 2023. It has since reopened on a smaller scale. That company had talked with Brueggeman beforehand about expanding operations and bringing in floor malters, workers who harvest barley by hand. “I was thinking things were looking up,” he said. “It wasn’t a month or two after I heard that information that I heard they closed their doors. When you have the biggest pure craft malting facility in the nation, I believe it was at the time, just up and close its doors, it’s kind of concerning.” Indeed, the closures are a stark example of the decades-long decline of barley acreage nationwide. U.S. barley farmers seeded a record-low 2.3 million acres in 2025; this year, they’re slated to plant 2.4 million acres, a 6% increase. Washington farmers grew more than 1 million acres of barley in the late 1980s. This year, they planted 60,000 acres — one of five states planting a record low acreage. “The state of barley production in Washington is pretty dismal,” Brueggeman said. “Malt barley was not the main class of barley that was going to get us acreage, but at least there was 10,000 to 15,000 acres. As soon as they pulled out and quit contracting on the Palouse, it definitely pulled the rug out from under my plans for the program.” ‘The edge of the cliff’ “Barley has been on a downhill slope for the last 20 years,” Washington Grain Commission chairman Kevin Klein, who represents barley farmers, said during the March board meeting in Spokane. Great Western Malting represented the majority of the barley market, about 4,000 to 5,000 metric tons a year. “Our barley acres have pretty much dropped off the edge of the cliff,” Klein said during the meeting. Idaho is the top barley producer in the Northwest, with the most metric tons available to serve malthouses in southern Idaho. North Dakota and Montana farmers serve Coors in Colorado. Washington remains at No. 6 in production. The larger breweries are supplying malt to smaller regional craft brewers, Klein noted. LINC Malt in Spokane uses roughly 300 tons a year; Cascadia Malts in Nine Mile Falls, Wash., uses 500 tons. Coldstream Malt and Grain in Nezperce, Idaho, uses 3,500 tons. “I don’t foresee barley going completely away and completely disappearing in the state of Washington, there’s a lot of small markets spread throughout the state,” Klein said. Pivot Brueggeman isn’t abandoning malt barley, hoping there’s a market in the craft industry. But that’s a pretty small acreage, he said. With grant funding, he is investing in breeding for food barley, which is growing, but also starting at a “pretty low level.” “Feed barley is the one that commands the major amount of acreage,” he said. He’s adding in traits like herbicide tolerance to command more acreage, while his big focus is “yield, yield, yield” to make the crop profitable for farmers. “But the market there isn’t great, either,” Brueggeman said. Feed barley is about $180 per ton, according to Northwest Grain Growers. Traits of interest in Asian markets are completely different from academic ideas, mostly mill waste. The variety South Korean buyers like isn’t necessarily one Brueggeman would have selected for because it has smaller grain, but it requires less milling to get it down to the size of a rice kernel. “I feel like we’re spread out all over the place” producing for niche markets, Brueggeman said. “We’re doing feed, food, malt, forage — a lot of moving targets.” ‘Perfect environment’ Matt Horlacher, CEO of Coldstream Malt and Grain, believes the Great Western facility closed due to a combination of aging infrastructure and logistics — more barley is produced in southeast Idaho. “I think the state policies on agricultural production are maybe a little bit more favorable in Idaho than they are in Washington,” Horlacher said. “We’re allowed to do what we want to do in Washington from a farming standpoint; when you look at the processors, that’s where the struggle’s happening and the most pressure is.” Horlacher raises barley on his farm in Latah, Wash. He is barley sector director on the U.S. Grains and BioProducts Council. He believes the industry should focus on export markets, particularly for food barley in Southeast Asia, South Korea and Japan. “We just need to focus on making those connections and then providing a product that’s superior to what’s being grown in the rest of the world,” he said. “Twenty years ago, that was easy, and now a lot of other countries are catching up to our production practices and quality parameters.” That means supporting university breeding programs and bringing in as many trade teams as possible, he said. The first annual U.S. Malt Summit ran Aug. 3-8, with attendees from Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Thailand, Vietnam and El Salvador exploring the beer scene in Seattle and Eastern Washington barley growing regions. More barley is grown in North Dakota, Idaho and Montana, but those states struggle getting the product to particularly Asian markets, Horlacher said. “We’re sitting in the perfect environment here in dryland Washington especially to grow barley, to process it, get it loaded in containers and get it shipped,” Horlacher said. “We can compete with the rest of the world if we ship out of Washington or northern Idaho.” Malt production in northern Idaho will return at some point, but it will likely be fall-planted instead of spring, Horlacher said. “We just have a better chance of meeting quality parameters with a fall-planted barley,” he said. Funding barley research “I think it’s pretty safe to say that we have one of the best barley breeders in the country,” Horlacher said. “I don’t think there’s a better program. Our biggest problem is we don’t collect enough assessment on barley acres right now to really go above and beyond in the breeding measures.” The grain commission ended its fiscal year with $83,000 in barley assessments. The board approved a barley breeding budget for $126,000. The commission has money in reserves and will draw on any assessments received in July to December 2026, CEO Casey Chumrau said. Some food barley markets are highly specialized. “You’re breeding a barley that doesn’t have tons and tons and tons of potential, but it has enough potential to be important to a company in Washington that might export 40,000 or 50,000 tons,” Horlacher said. “How do you fund that when the markets are not 100,000-acre markets like we’re dealing with in the malt industry?” Horlacher believes private-public partnerships to develop malting barley varieties for companies such as Anheuser-Busch or Molson Coors set the example for future food barley varieties. The Make America Healthy Again campaign, diabetes awareness and demand for whole grains are positive signs for future barley demand. “The potential is there to really replace a lot of other grains with barley,” he said. “The Washington Grain Commission is committed to supporting existing markets and finding new ones for Washington barley,” market development specialist Jessica Pupo said. “The commission remains committed to working hand-in-hand with Washington’s barley farmers and researchers to identify the barriers standing between barley producers and new markets, and to find practical ways to overcome them.” Here to stay Keeping Brueggeman at WSU has been a high priority during industry meetings when discussing the future of barley. “It feels good to be appreciated,” Brueggeman said with a grin. He began working with barley as an undergraduate student at WSU. Barley isn’t a big research community, but it’s a tight-knit one, Brueggeman said. Everyone’s willing to collaborate and share material. “Washington State’s my home, so there’s no worry about me leaving,” he said. “There’s probably other states and positions that have better funding and better support for barley, but that’s not something I would be looking at, leaving WSU. I started working with barley here and I will retire working with barley here.” Brueggeman’s message to barley farmers past, present and future: “Thank you. And reach out to me because I need input to understand what you’re looking for.” Stable, reliable markets are the biggest need, Brueggeman said. Even when there was a malting barley market, it had ebbs and flows with prices and overproduction, he said. “It’s difficult to get things back once they’re gone,” he said.